An important examination of the media suppression of 9/11 truth
- one of the most important issues of our time.
It is curious that it avoids the media campaign to focus on strawman false claims of complicity that avoid (or discredit)
the best evidence.
The author was the narrator for the documentary "The
End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream" yet does not mention the suggestion that 9/11 was allowed to happen (and/or
engineered) in order to provide the excuse to grab Middle East oil fields
as the world approaches Peak Oil.
Hopefully the second edition will mention that truth-seeking on these
issues is a two front war: confronting both the "limited
hang outs" and the no-planes disinformation in order to focus on reality.

summary

Barrie Zwicker’s book Towers of Deception
focuses on one of the most critical issues of our times - how the media
helped coverup the truths about 9/11. It exposes several ways that corporate
media - and even some "alternative" publications - went out
of their way to ignore gigantic problems with the 9/11 official story.
This self-censorship was one of the key factors that made the US invasion
of Iraq possible, since if the scandal had been adequately exposed there
could not have been needed public support for the current wars.

Towers has the potential to be incredible in its second edition.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of errors in the first edition
of "Towers," some small, some huge.

Towers does not mention the issue of petroleum supplies or Peak
Oil as a motivation for allowing / enabling / organizing the 9/11 attacks,
which is an astounding oversight from the narrator of "End of Suburbia"
and New Society, publisher of many of the best books on the topic of Peak
Oil. Barrie Zwicker's first film The Great
Deception (January / February 2002) had an episode highlighting the
importance of petroleum decline as a motivation to create a pretext to
invade the Middle East oil fields.

Towers of Deception ignores the fact that since 2004 the media
has begun to focus on the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement - to focus on
the false claims to avoid the best evidence. Nearly every mainstream
publication has run articles focusing on the alternative explanations,
sometimes in front page stories, a development undercuts the thesis of
“Towers," since the media is now giving lots of attention to
the cause of “9/11 Truth.” The Washington
Post, New York Times, USA
Today, Popular Mechanics, CNN,
C-Span, Fox, Parade, National Public Radio and
many others have focused on 9/11 truth, but their coverage has not been
a compliment. These media institutions are following a predictable pattern:
highlight the strawmen claims and bypass mention
of the best evidence.

Ideally, the second edition of "Towers" will mention the "two
front war" aspect of 9/11 truthseeking. The best evidence lies in
between the limited hang outs (fall back to the official story) and the
increasingly wild nonsense claims (no planes at all on 9/11).

Towers also contains false promotion of the "no plane crash at Pentagon"
and even "no plane crash in Pennsylvania" memes, which are remarkably
incorrect. It even gives credence to the (false) claim that "no phone
calls" were made on 9/11 from the planes, which was a brilliant tactic
to ensure that the 9/11 family members would be hesitant to work cooperatively
with the independent investigators. The footnote referencing this assertion
references independent investigator Jim Hoffman's website (despite the
fact this website points out the claim is not "truth") and that
Mr. Dewdney, the sole source for this accusation, allegedly proved airphones
(which definitely do work in planes) were not used (without mentioning
even a scintilla of evidence for this extraordinary claim). A careful
fact checking review would have screened this and other falsehoods from
the final draft.

Curiously, New Society's Judith Plant told this reviewer that they understand
the "no plane" claims are not real yet was unable to explain
how they passed a fact checking process. (Disclaimer: New Society rejected
my book proposal, but this review is not directly correlated to this rejection.
The facts speak for themselves, even if they are ignored by the "no
plane" and the "no conspiracy" points of view.)

Zwicker
timeline

The Great Deception, January - February, 2002

Barrie Zwicker's film The Great Deception was a six part television commentary
for Vision TV of Toronto that was the first documentary to highlight the
video of George W. Bush reading to second graders after he was told the
second tower was hit (Great Deception aired more than two years before
Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11).
The transcript of the film is reposted at www.oilempire.us/great-deception.html
Great Deception was an amazing profile of the basic issues of complicity,
one of the earliest serious efforts to document the truth behind the official
story. It is a nice compliment to Michael Ruppert's November 2001 speech
recorded in the film The
Truth and Lies of 9/11. The only problem with Great Deception is the
argument that there was a "stand down" order -- when the effect
of a "stand down" was more likely paralysis induced by multiple,
overlapping war game exercises by parts of the military and intelligence
services that morning. The follow-up film Great Conspiracy: the 9/11
News Special You Never Saw discussed this deeper understanding (which
was not publicly known that soon after the events).

The psychological trick at the heart
of September 11th, by the way, is that people confuse their compassion
for the victims with their certainty about who the perpetrators are.
The public was presented with instant perpetrators. The trick will most
likely continue working for all future planned invasions – looks
as if Iraq is next – so long as the public remains blindfolded
by the media.
-- Great Deception, Episode 4

Reichstag Fire analogy, April 2003

Zwicker made these
comments on April 21, 2003 at the premier showing of "Aftermath:
Unanswered Questions from 9/11" in San Francisco, California.

My offering is that 9/11
was what the anarchist Bakunin called "the propaganda of the act."
That it was "Reichstag Fire 2001."
That it was the greatest deception of its kind ever foisted. And that's
saying something, in light of the long and totally-neglected history of this kind of war-triggering deception perpetrated by powerful special
interests to sway public opinion in favour of deadly agendas that almost
always result in serious grief for just
about everyone.
My offering is that 9/11 was arranged to jump start the so-called war
on terrorism, which in turn is the cover and heat exchanger for hot
wars, these being the toxic tip of the machinery for world
domination. At the levers is a clique of neocons that has hijacked this country's foreign policy at the behest largely
and to the benefit mainly of Big Arms and Big Oil, with the rest of
the worst at the top, giving the thumbs-up and boarding the gravy train.

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse
of the American Dream, 2004

Barrie Zwicker was the narrator for the critically acclaimed 2004 documentary The End of Suburbia,
a feature length film about Peak Oil. This film was probably the first
focused on this subject, and was relatively successful for an independent
film tackling controversial topics. (It has been shown in numerous movie
theaters, church basements, university classrooms, living rooms, neighborhood
association meetings and many other locations.)

The first public showing of End of Suburbia was a short excerpt at the
March 2004 International 9/11 Inquiry in San Francisco. The full film
debuted at the International Citizens' Inquiry in Toronto two months later.
While End of Suburbia does not discuss the details of 9/11 complicity,
it does feature Mike Ruppert discussing the global situation of Peak Oil
that was a primary motivation for allowing (and assisting) the attacks.

International Citizens' Inquiry into 9/11, May
2004

Zwicker was primary organizer of the International Citizens' Inquiry
into 9/11, held May 25 to 30, 2006 in Toronto. The event was a mix of
success and failure, great speakers, low turnout and not much political
visibility (at least on the surface). Some of the best writers and investigators
on these issues made presentations (which were recorded for future dissemination).
Perhaps the high point of the Inquiry was Michael Ruppert's presentation
toward the end of the week about the role of the military and intelligence
war games on 9/11 which included new information that he had uncovered
through careful investigatory journalism.

However, Ruppert's presentation (and the other speakers who spoke on
the weekend) was made to a small audience in a very large auditorium (Convocation
Hall at the University of Toronto), and without any media coverage. Many
in the audience were privately sad (and embarrassed?) to see a huge hall
virtually empty despite the tremendous importance of the topics. One of
the speakers, John Gray, has written books that sold millions of copies
(Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus), and presumably would have attracted
a large crowd had there been adequate publicity about the event. The weekday
presentations were in a much smaller location that would have been adequate
for the weekend plenary conclusion session. Perhaps the low turnout was
merely a case of Canadians being less directly interested or affected
by the 9/11 issues. Perhaps it was a consequence of expensive tickets
for the whole event, but one-day-only tickets were reasonably priced given
the size of the event. Perhaps it was someone working surreptitiously
to ensure that the Inquiry would be a money-losing event by renting the
largest possible location and then "forgetting" to adequately
publicize it. Whatever the cause(s) of the low turnout, the conference
was deeply in debt afterwards.

www.museumofhoaxes.com/tuck.htmlDick Tuck
Dick Tuck was a legendary political hoaxer who made a career out of
making life miserable for Richard Nixon.
In 1950 both Nixon and Tuck were near the start of their careers. Nixon
was running for a California senate seat against democratic opponent
Helen Gagahan Douglas, and Tuck was working for Douglas's campaign.
Nixon was running an extremely dirty campaign, making every effort to
portray his opponent as a communist-sympathizer. This red-bashing had
already worked successfully for him in a 1946 congressional race against
the democrat Jerry Voorhis, and had propelled him to national fame as
a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Tuck decided
that he would undermine Nixon by getting himself hired as a campaign
worker in Nixon's campaign, where he would secretly operate as a mole
for Douglas.
As a campaign worker for Nixon, Tuck was responsible for organizing
campaign rallies. He organized one such rally at UC Santa Barbara, and he booked the largest auditorium possible.
However, he purposefully
booked it on a day that few students would be able to attend, and then
he barely publicized it at all. Therefore, when Nixon showed up to speak
there were only 40 students waiting to hear him in a 4000 seat auditorium.

Citizens Commission on 9/11, September 9, 2004

Barrie Zwicker was a participant in the Citizens Commission on 9/11,
an all day event in New York City chaired by Representative Cynthia McKinney.
This forum highlighted most of the best investigators and commentators
on 9/11 issues, including Michael Ruppert, John Judge, Michael Springman,
Indira Singh, Jenna Orkin, Nicholas Levis and others. A DVD video of this
event is probably the single best, most comprehensive presentation on
these issues that will ever be made - everyone involved was at their best.
However, few 9/11 truth activists chose to promote awareness of this video
footage, and it languishes in obscurity.

The Citizens Commission forum should not be confused with "Confronting
the Evidence" - an event in New York City on September 11, 2004 that
mixed good and bogus material (a DVD of that event is being pushed by
reopen911.org, a hoax site trying to hijack
the 9/11 truth issue with fake claims).

Hoaxers involved with the film "In Plane
Site" created a booklet in mid-2005 purporting to be the "9/11
Citizens Commission" although their booklet does not mention the
September 9, 2004 event and pushes the "no plane hit Pentagon"
hoax.

The Great Conspiracy: the 9/11 News Special You
Never Saw, Fall 2004

The Great Conspiracy was a sequel to The Great Deception. It was a much
more polished production than the first film, yet never received much
attention from the media or even much of the 9/11 truth movement. A free
copy of the DVD is included with each copy of Towers of Deception.

Hopefully, a future version will remove the short segment showing a
photoshopped image purporting to be evidence that Flight 77 did not hit
the Pentagon.

In 2005, Zwicker was invited on a 9/11 truth "megatour" through
several European countries with millionaire Jimmy Walter, who has spent
many millions promoting "no plane hit the Pentagon." Most of
the other speakers who were selected for the tour were excellent writers
-- but a couple of people promoting nonsense were also included in the
mix (apart from the fact that Walter's "reopen911" website had
highlighted the claim that "nukes blew up the towers"). The
worst offender against "truth" on the tour was Christopher Bollyn
of the white supremacist American Free Press, whose
Barnes Review subsidiary claims the Holocaust was a hoax and Hitler deserved
the Nobel Peace Prize. American Free Press works closely (by their own
admission) with KKK leader David Duke, who is not known for his accuracy
or compassion.

It was curious that a leftist dissident who eloquently describes the
parallels between the Reichstag Fire and 9/11 would be part of an international speaking tour that included
a famous Holocaust denial publication.
A fellow invitee to the tour who raised objections to the inclusion of
white supremacy was disinvited from the tour. None of the other speakers
made public statements about avoiding neo-Nazi newspapers spewing a mix
of real evidence and hoaxes.

911truth.org Chicago conference, May 2006

"We should always have mutual respect
among ourselves when we're discussing anything... because then it's
not so easy for someone to sow discord in our midst. We should never
engage... in name-calling... there's a certain person who says, 'Anyone
who says that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon is a 'hoaxter'.'
... the more of us who do not call names the more the name-callers will
stand out like sore thumbs."
www.911blogger.com/2006/07/barrie-zwicker-on-agents-of-state_01.html

In reality, most of the people who still believe in any of the
"no plane" claims are sincere -- but that sincerity does not
make them any less wrong in their assertions.

None of the activists, writers,
investigators, eyewitnesses, etc. who point out this claim is wrong argue
for Zwicker's assertion that "anyone who says a Boeing 757 did not
hit the Pentagon is a hoaxer."

However, the ORIGIN of this claim
was a deliberate hoax from Donald Rumsfeld, even if most of those who
promote it have merely swallowed the bait without double-checking the
facts.

Barrie Zwicker and From the Wilderness

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/091106_official_conspiracy.shtml
I know Barrie Zwicker and respect him greatly.
While FTW and Barrie have parted company in regards to what we feel is
and is not the best evidence to prove official U.S. government complicity
in the crimes of 9/11, my hat goes off to the man for recently recognizing
the incredible importance of Mike Ruppert’s work with respect to
the crimes of 9/11.
So many individuals investigating 9/11 who once held Mike in high esteem
have completely turned their backs on him – and FTW – because
we hold a different position regarding what hit the Pentagon and the dangers
of relying on physical evidence in 9/11 investigations. It’s good
to see that Barrie remembers who was there first, and best.
Barrie has also educated people on the dangerous reality of Peak Oil,
and there is no more valuable service to the world that a media critic
can provide. – Michael Kane]

THE OFFICIAL 9/11 STORY IS THE BIGGEST CONSPIRACY, By Barry Zwicker
[Originally published at: www.commonground.ca/iss/0609182/cg182_Zwicker.shtml

Michael C. Ruppert, although he has,
unfortunately, made some negative and unnecessary remarks about the
9/11 truth movement, remains a giant of the movement in my eyes nevertheless.
He was about the earliest out of the gate, and when he spoke in Toronto
in January of 2002, he pried my eyes open much wider than they were
at that time. He connected the dots between the CIA, Wall Street, the
illegal drug trade, corruption in the US government and 9/11. I believe
his video, Truth and Lies of 9/11, was the first of its kind, based
on a talk he gave in Portland, Oregon, in November 2001. He now focuses
almost exclusively on Peak Oil and again, not only was he early on that,
but he has also helped boost the visibility of the coming end of the
age of oil, which will be civilization-shaking.

note: the allegedly "negative remarks" pointed out how the
movement got diverted into speculation. It is difficult to understand
how Zwicker's 2006 book did not mention Peak Oil at all, given the fact
that New Society publishes more books about Peak Oil than any other publisher,
and Barrie's narration of the film End of Suburbia shows he has an excellent
understanding of the topic and its role as a motivation for 9/11.

Curiously, the profiles of 9/11 truth activists in Towers of Deception
did not include Michael Ruppert's work, which is curious considering that
he actually did original investigative reporting, unlike most of the other
activists mentioned in two page profiles in the book.

Hi Barry,
Thanks for responding. I knew you would eventually. And thanks for reading
my long email. It took a long time for me two write.
Now I'm thinking we should have a phone conversation, because I just
realized you've never *really* heard the argument of those of us who
believe Flight 77 did, in fact, hit the Pentagon. Your email indicates
you
aren't really following our line of thought here.
Please let me quickly respond to some of your comments, but then I'd
really like to talk to you about it when you have some time to pay
attention.

Barrie:
how could Hani Hanjour, denied the right to rent a Cessna, have piloted
a giant airliner at ground level after coming out of a 270-degree spin
descent.

Emanuel:
Of course Hanjour didn't pilot the plane. All the planes were being operated
by remote control. Nobody disagrees about this.

Barrie:
If it was a Boeing, why doesn't the Pentagon release a picture or two
showing -- or alleging to show -- the airliner?

Emanuel:
Because they are purposefully trying to make the 9/11 truth movement look
foolish, especially in the eyes of folks in the DC area, many of whom
saw the plane hit themselves, and/or have relatives/friends who saw the
plane hit. If they released clear images of the airliner, the 9/11 truth
movement would stop believing the kooky missile theory, and we might start
focusing more on remote-control, the wargames, and other issues that would
improve our credibility.

Here's a quote from Jeff Wells who runs the Rigorouos Intuition blog,
explaining it another way:

"... consider the Pentagon crash, and the confiscation of the
video from the service station security camera. That the video has never
been released is regarded by many as damning evidence that authorities
are trying to hide the true nature of the crash: that the video must
reveal that it wasn't Flight 77 but a missile, or a fighter jet. But
think: perhaps the video remains hidden because some people are quite
happy to mindfuck the conspiracists and perpetuate an erroneous line
of inquiry. Would they want to lay to rest a mistaken hypothesis, when
it misdirects the efforts of so many? It may be that the question is
not What have they got to hide? but rather, Why do they want us to think
that they're hiding something?"

That said, there *are* in fact clear photos of flight 77 plane wreckage inside the Pentagon. Here they are:

http://rense.com/general32/phot.htm

Barrie:
Re the "DC professionals..." I need to know who exactly they
are. DC is filled with operators.

Emanuel:
You're missing the point here. The idea is that the perpetrators
of 9/11 are promoting the "no plane" theory in order to make
us look bad in the eyes of others, and especially professionals in the
DC area, because these are the people that matter the most. Congresspeople,
senators, their staff, prosecuters, judges, etc. These are the people
who might be able to bring enough political clout to the issue to get
a real investigation, and so what better way to make sure that these people
don't listen to us than by making them think that we believe no plane
hit the Pentagon, when they saw it themselves, or their relatives and
friends did, because hundreds of people saw it.
Do you understand what we're saying now? It's a psyop. Many good people
have fallen for it (like I did for years), but it is part and parcel of
the whole campaign to muddy the waters and make us look bad. I
hope you now see that our rational powers are not in doubt here. The argument has all along been much more simple and rational than I think
you have realized. It's too easy to dismiss the argument quickly, assuming
that those who believe that flight 77 hit the Pentagon must believe the
official story. Heck no! The plane that hit the Pentagon was being flown
by remote control! Hanjour could never have
flown it.
Ok I didn't mean for this email to be so long. I really think it's better
if we have a conversation about it. So many nuances get lost in email,
which has clearly happened many times around this issue.
... And again, this is only important to me because you are so important
to me. Honestly I have lost hope for justice around 9/11. I don't think
it's going to make a bit of difference now whether you and everyone suddenly
realized the "no plane" theories are psyop campaigns. But I
do think it will enhance your own understanding of how we have all been
manipulated, and this I feel I owe to you, since you have been such an
inspiration to me.

detailed
review of Towers of Deception

Here is a detailed review of the excellent points and mistakes in "Towers"
that show how many sincere leaders of the 9/11 Truth Movement have been
steered into traps.

pp. vi - vii

"What is your take on the events
of 9/11?"

"The Four-Box 9/11 Questionnaire"
....

Box 1 equates to the Official Story of
9/11
Box 2 equates to The Incompetence Theory
Box 3 equates to the Let It Happen On Purpose (or LIHOP) theory and
Box 4 equates to The Inside Job theory, or Made It Happen On Purpose
(MIHOP) theory.

This list of four scenarios overlooks a hybrid perspective --
the attacks were allowed to happen and then given technical assistance
to ensure that they did happen. Clearly, there is overwhelming
evidence that the attacks were deliberately allowed to happen (LIHOP),
but LIHOP alone is an inadequate explanation. However, claiming that it
was completely a Bush-Cheney conspiracy is also not probably correct (see
"Peeling the Onion," archived at www.oilempire.us/qaeda.html for an intriguing theory of how the various players were manipulated).
LIHOP alone does not explain the "coincidence" of the military
/ intelligence war game exercises that morning
which apparently confused the air defenses, nor how Flight 77 flew into
the nearly empty, recently reconstructed and strengthened sector of the
Pentagon (which suggests some sort of remote control / computer piloting system was used).

The hybrid scenario (allowed to happen and given technical assistance)
could be called "Hijacking the Hijackers with remote control,"
and it is the closest parallel to the Reichstag
Fire that Zwicker repeatedly cites. Here are a few summaries that
explain this paradigm:

www.oilempire.us/understanding.htmlA hybrid scenario that fits
the known evidence is "hijacking the hijackers."In
this view, the hijackers were allowed to finish their preparations,
board the planes, hijack the controls but then remote control technology
was used to ensure that the planes not only completed their missions
but also did not strike targets that would have caused even more damage.
Flight 11, the first hijacked plane, flew over Indian Point nuclear
power station, just north of New York City (an attack there would have
been much, much worse than 9/11). And if Flight 77 had hit any other
part of the Pentagon, thousands of people could have been killed. This
hybrid scenario is speculative, but remote control flight technology
is commercially available.

from Nicholas Levis, summeroftruth.org:"Staging 9/11 as an inside job is going to work
best (in fact, is likely to work only) if there actually exists an active
network of anti-American terrorists who are deeply committed to killing
Americans in response to U.S. policy. In other words, those
who would blame Qaeda need a (relatively) real Qaeda. A partly-real
enemy is much better than an entirely fabricated one.
"The most robust way for insider masterminds to stage 9/11
and get away with it is to arrange for their agents to infiltrate among
"real foreign terrorists." Let them come up with
their own plots (or plant plots among them), choose a plot that will
produce the results desired by the masterminds, and see that through
to fruition. At some point, the masterminds and their agents
will hijack the plot from the would-be hijackers, to make sure it happens.
You won't risk the whole game on the ability of amateurs to get away
with it, you will help them along or even replace them (with a remote
control hijacking, for example). But it's best to have "real terrorists"
in play. They leave a more solid trail of evidence internationally. Cops and agents and academics of two dozen countries can honestly confirm
the existence of an al-Qaeda network. That way there is less need to
initiate outside observers into the plot and you don't have to hope
they are all stupid, as they would have to be to fall for a complete
fabrication of "Qaeda." (Qaeda at this point is just a term
of convenience for the Islamist extremist networks.)
"The best result would be for a whole bunch of Islamist
extremists running around believing that their crew pulled off 9/11
all by themselves (how inspiring for them!). The patsies should believe
they actually did it. This was the case with the Reichstag
Fire and Marinus van der Lubbe: the patsy believed he had done it."

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/10/skinny-on-osama.html
I've long thought that if we assume a decision had been taken
to let it happen, then we should expect that measures were be taken
to ensure it happened precisely as desired, and spectacularly so. With
so much at stake, nothing would be left to the skill and luck of the
19 hijackers. Flight 77's 270 degree turn to hit the ground
floor of the virtually unoccupied side of
the Pentagon, while supposedly piloted by
the grossly incompetent Hani Hanjour, is the most striking example.
The recent report that the WTC black boxes were recovered after all,
is suggestive of the same: that the data conflicted somehow with the
received fiction. Perhaps the hijackers were themselves hijacked.

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/07/more-on-london-bombs.html
Friday, July 08, 2005
More on London bombs:I prefer the hybrid model for all these attacks, by which I
mean the involvement of real Islamic terrorists guided by an intelligence
agency. The intelligence agency funds much of the operation,
chooses the targets and the time, and provides technical assistance.
The Islamic terrorists provide most of the manpower. In some
cases the terrorists are completely fooled into participating (probably
what happened in Madrid, a Spanish police operation with Muslim men
tricked into being in the wrong place at the wrong time), and
in some cases they go along with the promptings of the intelligence
agency as the operation fits into their own agenda.

p. 25

Towers lists a number of claims for complicity that are correct, but
there are two pieces of bait included in the rest of the mix.

The claim that "pull it" is a synonym for "demolish"
in the demolition industry is not true --
Larry Silverstein's widely forwarded statement that they made a decision
to "pull" Building 7 was just a nice piece of bait to lure the
9/11 truth activists and distract from much better evidence about the
collapse of WTC 7 that is not subject to linguistic interpretations.

Towers alleges that "all pictures of the Pentagon after teh event
showed a hole much smaller than would be made by a 757." However,
this claim has been debunked ever since it was first alleged (even debunked
by 9/11 truth activists!). The photos taken shortly after the impact clearly show (if you look) damage on the
ground floor as wide as the wings (which is where they hit). The engines
and bulkier parts of the wings gouged out a hole,
the wingtips merely damaged the outside of the facade -- but the full
impact on the building matches the cross section of a 757. The section
that was struck had been reinforced during the previous three years, which
is why the building largely withstood the impact for the first half-hour
or so.

Towers notes that the WTC steel was rushed out of the country, stating
that "an examination of that steel would show whether it had been
exposed to demolition explosives." Other commentators have suggested
an alternative explanation for the tampering with the physical evidence
- the alleged substandard construction of the building was in part responsible
for the collapse, and covering up that scandal would have been sufficient
motivation to literally shred the evidence. There are some compelling
claims for demolition, but some compelling claims against it, too -- and
the demolition theories are for many reasons
not the best evidence for complicity.

p. 29

"David Ray Griffin's New Pearl Harbor
has been reviewed to his knowledge by only two daily newspapers in the
English-speaking world, The Vancouver Sun and the conservative Daily
Mail of London."

In March 2005, the last time I talked with Barrie Zwicker in person,
I asked him if he had read the October 7, 2004 Washington
Post review of New Pearl Harbor -- which focused solely on the "no
plane" claims and ignored the rest of the book. He replied that he
was not familiar with it. Despite sending the article via email to him
shortly afterwards, the fact of this review was not mentioned here in
the book. It seems obvious that the Washington Post, which has extensive
ties to official Washington, focused on the false part of the book in
order to avoid the rest of the book.

"Recently the Daily Mail ... published
a fair review of the just released book 9/11 Revealed: Challenging Facts
behind the War on Terror by Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan."

It is also likely that the book 9/11 Revealed was reviewed by the right-wing
"Daily Mail" tabloid in Britain because the book offers a confusing
mix of real evidence and nonsense. Jim Hoffman's 9/11 Research website
has a detailed review that shows the book is not a reliable source.

"In his introduction to The New
Pearl Harbor ... David Griffin makes a distinction ... between cumulative
and deductive arguments ... Only one exhibit needs to be proven true
(beyond a reasonable doubt) for the "Inside Job" theory to
be strengthened, or even proved (the "smoking gun"). If more
than one holds up, the case for an Inside Job becomes even more substantive.
If a clear majority hold up, the argument for Inside Job becomes nearly
invincible.
"What if, on the other hand, one exhibit (or a part of one exhibit),
fails to hold up ... It simply means that particular exhibit can be
set aside for further scrutiny or turn out to be entirely wrong."

While it is true that the claims for complicity can be established if
some of the arguments are disproved, it is also true that the media is
now highlighting those that have been disproved so that the best evidence
can be safely ignored. If an advocate says ten smart things and one dumb
thing to a hostile reporter, the dumb thing is the one that will be shown
on the television news. Recognizing this media
strategy would require an admission of how the "truth movement"
was led astray and some collective self-examination of how many could
fall for something that was blatantly false.

p. 45

"Best evidence includes photographic,
so long as it has not been tampered with. Evidence that has been tampered
with constitutes powerful evidence in itself ... When the tampering
reveals the pattern of cover-up, the likelihood of guilt for the crime
in question escalates.
"Fresh oral testimony is better than later oral testimony."

Despite this, a photoshopped compound pseudo-picture is on page 82 that
was generated by the propaganda campaign to persuade the 9/11 "truth"
movement that a plane did not crash into the Pentagon. All of the people
interviewed shortly after the event who had a good view of the crash stated
that they saw a large twin engine jet fly into the building. A couple
people who were farther away were more confused, but everyone who was
closest to the scene agreed on what they saw.

p. 47

Exhibits A-Z

26 primary exhibits are listed as evidence of complicity and conspiracy.
Most of these are accurate and are critical pieces of evidence, but a
few of them are without merit (in particular the pseudo-evidence alleging
that there is a question about what hit the Pentagon and the false claim
that the phone calls from the doomed planes were faked).

p. 51

On p. 51, the "pull it" quote from WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein
is mentioned (again) as evidence for demolition, even though the evidence
shows that "pull" is a demolition industry term for pulling
over a damaged building with cables (as was done to WTC Building 6, which
was massively damaged by the towers falling onto it). As stated above,
the "pull it" statement was merely bait for the 9/11 truth movement.

p. 76

The profile of William Rodriguez doez not mention that he filed a lawsuit
against President George Walker Bush alleging that missiles were fired
at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which makes his other allegations
difficult to accept without independent corroboration. Others have suggested
that the elevator shafts acted as conduits of airplane fuel and blast
waves (from the impact and subsequent explosion) into the basement levels,
which explains the alleged damage to the basement immediately after each
plane hit each tower.

p. 82

Jim Hoffman and Don Paul are cited as providers of a photoshopped montage
of pictures of the Pentagon impact zone, a composite image that has been
used to promote the "Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon" hoax.
Hoffman in particular was astonished to be given credit for this doctored
photo, since he has been explicit in discussing how the “no plane”
theories are not real.

p. 84

In a discussion of the inadequate video
images of Flight 77 that were released by the military, Zwicker asks:

"Since these totally unrevealing
images cannot end legitimate conjecture by anyone, the larger question
raised is what game the Pentagon is playing in its using disinformation
as a weapon."

Zwicker's question is easily answered: the hiding of the visual evidence
of the plane hitting the Pentagon is just reverse
psychology to ensure the success of Rumsfeld's "Pentagon Missile"
hoax. We don't need the videos to know that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon
-- hundreds of people saw it happen, hundreds more were involved in the
cleanup of the plane parts (and it is not possible for them to all be
co-conspirators with Cheney and Rumsfeld). The damage to the building
is consistent with a 757 (the "small
hole" claim is refuted by looking at pictures of the impact zone)

p. 88

A chart is provided that alleges that cell phone coverage would not have
been possible from the hijacked planes. However, this chart does not show
where this alleged data was generated (although it was in a different
country than the events in question, which suggests its evidentiary value
is worthless). Zwicker claims that

"Over countryside such as rural
Pennsylvania, without cell phone transmitters, service is unavailable
at any altitude."

This is an extraordinary claim that has no citations.

How does the author know there is not any cell phone coverage in the
Flight 93 crash area? It crashed near the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which
probably has continuous cell-phone service despite the rural area (like
most busy interstate highways in the United States).

The first footnote for this "Exhibit" (see p. 374) cites Jim
Hoffman, whose website points out the "no cell phone calls" is a hoax.

The claim that the phone calls could not have been possible and therefore
were faked by the military was an effective way to ensure that the 9/11
families and the truth movement would not be able to work together. This
false claim is perhaps the most offensive of the myriad 9/11 hoaxes, since
it is a sly way to accuse the families of the victims of lying when they
say they talked with their relatives in their final moments.

p. 89

"In a series of experiments ...
in London, Ontario, Canada ..."

A cell phone call in Ontario cannot determine whether reception is possible
in another country. A real experiment to verify the reality of the calls
would have had to test cell-phone reception at the same locations and
altitudes of the doomed planes. Otherwise, the claim of impossible phone
calls is without merit.

"all aircraft from which calls were
allegedly made were at verified altitudes of more than 25,000 feet.
Under these conditions, the cell phone calls were physically impossible."

In reality, many of the calls are known to have been placed after the
airplanes had already started to descend to lower altitudes. Even if the
alleged cell phone experiments cited were accurate, the cell phone calls
could easily have been made at the lower, actual altitudes.

"expert opinion within the wireless
telecom industry is unequivocal."

No list of experts within the industry is provided to justify this assertion
(the footnote does not provide documentation).

p. 90

The profile of Kee Dewdney, the source for the "no phone calls"
claims, states that "He has also ruled
out Airfones as the source of the calls." However,
there is not a scintilla of evidence provided for this, not even a link
to Mr. Dewdney's website. Airfones definitely do work in commercial jet
planes at cruising altitude (that's why passengers sometimes pay money
to use them).

At the May 2004 International Citizens Inquiry in Toronto, he argued
that the truth movement should develop theories and then work to find
facts to fit them. A much better approach would be to triple-check pieces
of evidence, and then see how the best documented facts fit together to
determine the truth.

Dewdney's website "Physics911" is a key promoter of the "No
Planes on 9/11" claims, stating that Flight 77 wings could not have
broken off and folded into the alleged small hole at the Pentagon, and
therefore Flight 77 could not have hit the building. (In reality, the
wings shattered when they hit the outside and gouged a 90 plus foot wide
hole on the ground floor. The lightest parts of the wingtips only scored
the outside but did not create a hole in the heavily reinforced structure.

Dewdney's early 9/11 theorizing included a fanciful scenario of "plane
substitution" theories that confused the issue of how remote control
technology could have been used to hijack the four Boeings. It claimed
that the four planes all landed at a single site with the passengers loaded
onto a single plane, with substitute planes flown into the targets. This
obviously convoluted (and wrong) scenario makes for entertaining science
fiction for some readers, but it ensured that many others would be turned
off to the possibility that the planes were electronically hijacked.

Dewdney's Physics911 websitecontains the science fiction
story "Operation Pearl," which theorizes that the passengers
on the four planes were all escorted onto Flight 93, perhaps in Harrisburg,
PA, and then Flight 93 then was shot down while the other three planes
were dumped into the Atlantic. The odds of this being true are about the
same as winning the lottery, since this would have made it much less likely
to keep the operation secret and compartmentalized to the minimum number
of people possible. Physics911 states that they prefer to invent
hypotheses and then see if there's evidence that fits their story (although there isn't actually any evidence to support "Operation
Pearl"). However, it is more scientific to stick to the best
evidence (which is triple checked) and then see what
scenario could possibly fit the provable evidence.

Physics911 has attacked 9/11 Research's Jim Hoffman, a story detailed
at Hoffman's site at http://911research.wtc7.net/re911/adhominem.html Physics911 falsely promoted the claim that Hoffman was claiming to be
a medical doctor and was part of SPINE's advisory board. It took a long
time for Physics911 to remove their false claims from their site despite
numerous requests from Hoffman.

The Towers profile of Mr. Dewdney states that he is calling for a "scientific
jihad," an inflammatory term that a good editor should have removed
before publication.

It is curious that Mr. Dewdney, whose "research" is easily
debunked," got a two page profile as a leading truth activist while
those who've done original quality investigations such as Michael Ruppert,
John Judge and Daniel Hopsicker were not similarly profiled.

p. 108

A minor fact check error: Zwicker cites Zbigniew Brzezinski as the source
for the claim that a "New Pearl Harbor" would be needed to control
Asian energy resources. This famous statement was part of the Project
for a New American Century report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses"
published in September 2000. Brzezinski's 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard"
stated that the US should control the world's energy supplies by controlling
the Middle East and Central Asia, but he was not directly part of the
PNAC. Mike Ruppert was the first person after 9/11 to highlight the significance
of "The Grand Chessboard" book in the context of 9/11.

p. 114

"why has the public not been informed
on the three black boxes ... found at the WTC site, and then confiscated
by the FBI? Why have the video tapes of the Pentagon confiscated by
the FBI from the CITGO gas station and Sheraton Hotel across the road
from the Pentagon not been released?"

This is easily explained. The "black
boxes" were allegedly retrieved by all three crash sites (WTC,
Pentagon, Pennsylvania), and that data would refute or confirm the remote
control hypothesis. If the data supported the official story, it likely
would have been made public.
In contrast, the suppression of the many surveillance
videos of the crash of Flight 77 is just reverse psychology - to bait
overly paranoid conspiracists unfamiliar with the geography of Arlington,
Virginia that the "no plane" claims were real. We don't need
these videos to know the plane hit the building - hundreds of people saw
the plane, tons of plane debris were recovered, passenger remaiins were
recovered, the black boxes were found and the damage to the building was
the width of the 757 cross-section. Why the plane was not intercepted
(even after the towers were hit) and how the plane was steered into the
nearly empty part of the Pentagon are real issues that show how 9/11 happened.

p. 127

The "Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11" is mentioned
on this page. It would be interesting to know how many Christians and
Jews are actually involved with this organization, since the coordinator
sent this author a vitriolic screed supporting Holocaust
denial. While there are many Jews who bitterly object to Israeli military
policies and the American Jewish lobby's influence in Washington, it is
unlikely that any Jews anywhere support Holocaust denial.

This Alliance also wrote a nasty attack on Michael Ruppert (From the
Wilderness) just before FTW's offices were burglarized in June 2006.

p. 131

"Even firmly-planted fictional stories,
however, can be cracked open if a sufficient number of questions about
them are permitted to prosper ...."

p. 132

"when data and belief come into
conflict, the brain does not automatically give preference to data.
This is why beliefs -- even bad beliefs, irrational beliefs, silly beliefs,
or crazy beliefs -- often don't die in the face of contradictory evidence."

This applies to the disinformation supporting the official story and
the disinformation purporting to expose the official conspiracy.

p. 134

Towers references JFK truth veteran Vince Salandria in the context of
the psychological difficulty of understanding the truth of official conspiracies.
Salandria has an excellent commentary about the JFK coup, stating that
WHY it was done is far more important than HOW (yet the mechanics of how
it was done got most of the attention). It is archived at www.oilempire.us/911why.html

It is also useful to compare how the JFK "truth"
movement was sabotaged with similar strategies that were used against
9/11 truth.

p. 138

The discussion of psychological manipulations avoids the dual nature
of this campaign (official story - best evidence - discrediting disinformation).

p. 139

"What if security camera footage
of the attack on the Pentagon was forced into public and showed something
other than a Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon?"

As mentioned elsewhere, this hiding of the videos is just a clever psychological
warfare operation against the 9/11 skeptics. Every piece of evidence shows
that Flight 77 really did crash into the Pentagon, even if some who were
fooled by this claim are now unable to admit making a mistake. It was
a professionally executed hoax, and most of those who believe it are sincere
- but that sincerity does not make the claim any less offensive to the
eyewitnesses, the 9/11 families, etc. While it does motivate many to believe
in conspiracy, it alienates more than it motivates - and most important,
it alienates those in official Washington who are probably the only people
in this society with the power to actually do anything about the crimes.

p. 142

"The mass of 9/11 coverage, when
accessible through a good index (as in the case of Paul Thompson's book
The Terror Timeline) can be useful for purposes of analysis. But as
coverage comes at the public on a daily basis, it is less than useless
in providing a coherent picture."

This is one of the most important observations in the book, and it would
be good for the second edition to expand on this point.

p. 148

The discussion of the NORAD, et al, war games needs more documentation.

p. 149

Towers cites Ruppert's conclusion that Cheney was running the war games
without mentioning his effort to try to document who was the "maestro"
coordinating the various wargames on 9/11.

p. 178

Towers promotes Greg Szymanski, a writer who allegedly "can manage
to uncover more substantial bits and pieces of the puzzle of 9/11"
than mainstream media editors. This writer promotes a variety of "no
plane" claims who publishes in Arctic Beacon, Rense and American
Free Press. Rense is a notorious promoter of Holocaust denial, and
the American Free Press works closely (by their own admission) with KKK
leader David Duke. It is strange that this book, which compares 9/11 to
the Reichstag Fire, would promote websites
that promote Holocaust denial.

p. 186

The profile of author Webster Tarpley omits the most important biographical
information - that he was a key part of the Lyndon LaRouche political
cult for many years. Tarpley's book on 9/11 is another mix of very good
information and easily discredited claims. While it is not a surprise
that his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror promotes the false "no Pentagon
plane" story, perhaps more disturbing for the context of "Towers"
is the fact that Tarpley claims that Peak Oil is a myth, a major contradiction
to Zwicker's excellent reporting in "The
Great Deception" and "End
of Suburbia." The profile includes a quote from Tarpley promoting
Jeff Rense (Holocaust denial), Alex Jones, the Dave von Kleist Power Hour
(producers of the "In Plane Site" hoax film), among other unreliable
sources.

pp.208
& 209

The chapter about Noam Chomsky is daring,
important analysis about a pattern of cover-up of official conspiracy.
Unfortunately, dozens of pages that contain excellent analysis about Professor
Chomsky's support for the official stories of the JFK assassination and
9/11 conclude with a hoax.

Towers reprints a conversation between a 9/11 truth activist and Chomsky
where the professor was asked to look at a photo of the Pentagon damage,
which allegedly had a “pattern of destruction inconsistent with
757.” However, the photo, reprinted on page 209, has most of the
damage caused by the plane obscured by emergency vehicles and a highway
guardrail. The damage caused by the right wing on the ground floor is
not visible due to the photographer's location and emergency vehicles.
A small part of the damage caused by the left wing is visible in the lower
left of the photo, but there are better
photos that show the full impact of Flight 77.

It is not a good strategy to attack Noam Chomsky for ignoring 9/11 complicity and include a false claim first uttered by Donald Rumsfeld.

p. 211

Towers cites Robert Stinnett's book "Day of Deceit" about
the true story of Pearl Harbor. However, his book was not the first on
the topic. Military historian John Toland wrote the excellent "Infamy:
Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath" 1982. The allegation that Pearl Harbor
was allowed to happen by President Roosevelt was raised by some Republicans
in Congress during the war, although their charges were largely dismissed
as partisan politics (even though they were correct).

"My belief is that General Short and I were not given the information
available in Washington and were not informed of the impending attack
because it was feared that action in Hawaii might deter the Japanese
from making the attack. Our president had repeatedly assured the American
people that the United States would not enter the war unless we were
attacked. The Japanese attack on the fleet would put the United States
in the war with the full support of the American public."
-- Admiral Kimmel, 1958 interview

p. 212

"False flag operations are unopposed
military operations, involving all the resources of the state."

Actually, false flag operations by definition are covert operations
that require the number of participants be kept as small as possible to
avoid detection.

p. 212

Zwicker discusses what he calls the "Q factor" - the likeability
of a particular spokesperson. He correctly notes that Chomsky's high "q
factor" is a distraction from his support of the official stories
of JFK and 9/11. However, he overlooks the fact that some people creating
new falsehoods about 9/11 truth (as bait) have a high likeability factor.
This is a different issue than those who unwittingly bought into the bait
-- but rather those who create new hoaxes for dissemination. Some of those
creating and spreading these falsehoods are absurdly obnoxious, but others
are carefully respectful and diplomatic even while they lie with a smile.

The politeness or rudeness of any particular person is not related to
whether their claims are accurate or not.

p. 213

"the most powerful disinformation
is 90 per cent true."

This truism also applies to the "no plane" campaign, which
wraps real evidence of complicity with the "no plane" poison
pill.

p. 218

The list of "left gatekeepers" on this page includes David
Zupan of the Northwest Media Project, which shows that Zwicker has read
through the "gatekeepers" section of Oil Empire.US, the only
internet site that has discussed his "gatekeeping" in regards
to 9/11 truth. Zupan has been an employee of Norman
Solomon, who is much more widely known for his attacks on journalists
investigating the details of 9/11 complicity.

p. 222

The precise role of foundation grants in limiting discussion of the most
controversial topics (such as 9/11) is complicated by psychological motivations
and fears. It is certainly true that foundation money is given to some
of the leading "gatekeepers" who have ridiculed serious efforts
to investigate 9/11 complicity. However, some of those who have received
these funds are willing to look at deep politics, and some of those who
aggressively attack such investigations don't receive any grants.

Towers profiles Alternative Radio's David Barsamian, who does not receive any foundation grants yet has loudly
attacked those who say that 9/11 was not a surprise attack. Foundation
funding is a factor, but psychological denial, fear, groupthink among
establishment liberals and a desire to maintain alleged credibility are
equally important.

p. 223

The "Left Gatekeepers" chart is a mix of good and not. It is
fascinating to see the flow of funds to the establishment liberals who
ignore 9/11, Peak Oil (and sometimes stolen elections). However, the chart
ignores how many opinion leaders ignore these issues yet go unfunded.
Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange, which is in this chart, is fearless
in supporting the deep political understanding (talking about 9/11 complicity
and other scandals) and has expressed outrage that the chart paints with
an overly broad brush.

The description of 9/11 as the "propaganda
of the act" is brilliant. If there is ever a second edition of "Towers" that is fact checked to remove the false parts, this section should be expanded upon to replace the no-plane claims.

It is hard to understand a rational explanation why a commentator who
compared 9/11 to the Nazi Reichstag Fire would accept an invitation to go on an international tour that included
the reporter for a neo-Nazi newspaper (American Free
Press, whose Barnes Review subsidiary is on record stating that Hitler
should have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize). At least the "AFP"
is not directly mentioned anywhere in "Towers."

p. 238

"completely made in the USA inside
job"

It is more likely that it was a partially made in the USA inside job.
As described above (see the description of p. vi) an inside job requires
at least partly real terrorists so the vast majority of military officials,
police agents, media experts and others in the establishment not part
of the conspiracy to permit the "attacks" will genuinely think
that it was a real terrorist attack that was a complete surprise. The
exact level of involvement of agents provocateurs and other types of double
agents in the alleged terrorist groups involved will probably never be
known, but they would have been instrumental in helping to shape the "attack."

p. 268

"according to wikipedia"

Wikipedia is an on-line encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. It
contains vast amounts of good material but also a lot of crap -- and there
is no mechanism to ensure quality control. Wikipedia was caught in a nasty
scandal involving a mean-spirited contributor who falsely accused a friend
of the assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy of being a suspect in his
murder -- a smear that remained on that site for months until media pressure
embarrassed Wikipedia into removing it.

Inserting numerous references to wikipedia in the footnotes for the book
is sloppy scholarship. Many college professors will flunk students if
they rely on wikipedia as a primary source.

p. 287

The discussion of the Beslan school massacre is sourced to four places:

the Wikipedia website,

Prison Planet (a website that promotes a large number of claims but
rarely makes efforts to do original journalism to check facts),

Webster Tarpley (a former associate of Lyndon LaRouche based in the
Washington, D.C. suburbs) and

Russian President (and former KGB agent) Vladimir Putin. It may be
true that Beslan was some sort of false flag terror, but some primary,
credible evidence would be required to document this claim.

Wikipedia is not a source for anything, since anyone can post
anything to it without peer review or fact checking by an editor. Prison
Planet and Tarpley have histories of mixing accurate and inaccurate material
(for example, both deny the reality of finite oil reserves).
Putin's assertions may or may not be correct (even dictators sometimes
tell the truth) but they cannot be trusted without corroboration.
Without doing original research in Russia, determining the truth of the
false flag claim is not possible.

The false flag terror attacks of 9/99 are much better documented but
not mentioned in Towers. 9/99 involved a series of apartment bombings
in Moscow that were blamed on the Chechen separatists yet were probably conducted
by Russian "state security." An excellent website documenting
the 9/99 false flag terror is http://eng.terror99.ru/explosions/

p. 312

This page contains a graphic of a David Ray Griffin speech that was broadcast
on the C-Span network. Zwicker suggests that this coverage was "breakthrough"
into the media, yet those writers and investigators who steer clear of
the "no plane" false claims don't even get coverage on C-Span.
Zwicker then states that the term "breakthrough" should be reserved
for the time when the major media cover 9/11 truth issues -- while ignoring
the fact that all of the institutions he highlights (The New York Times,
Washington Post, CNN, ABC) have all covered the issue, albeit in the tried
and tested pattern of highlighting "no planes" and ignoring
war games and suppressed warnings.

It is interesting there is a whole chapter in the book about David Ray
Griffin but very little on investigators who actually did primary research
(Michael Ruppert, John Judge, Daniel Hopsicker, Michel Chossudovsky, etc).
There is a big difference between being a popularizer of other peoples'
work and doing original investigative journalism. Both are needed, but
if one bases their writing on others work, it's generally polite to acknowledge
who did the initial efforts.

p. 315

This page excerpts a report about a David Griffin presentation on 9/11
that was posted to rense.com, a website that promotes Holocaust denial
and other absurdities along with some real evidence of governmental malfeasance.
It is somewhat comical to suggest media disinterest in wild “conspiracy
theories” when sourcing the claim to a website (rense.com) that
promotes holocaust denial and UFO conspiracies on its homepage!

p. 319

"Griffin has become a mentor to
the 9/11 Truth movement, connecting people to each other, passing about
significant information, encouraging effective, principled non-violent
action. Without accepting any office within the 9/11 Truth movement
he's nevertheless a major leader of it."

It is unknown if Griffin has previous political organizing experience
that he could share with the "movement," but he has been uninterested
in the fact that fake claims are being seeded into the literature to provide
an easy means for the media to debunk the claims for complicity, even
though his work has been attacked repeatedly in the media via this strategy.

An article in a New Hampshire publication in March 2006 contrasts the
two main thoughts in the 9/11 truth movement in how to cope with the hoaxes:

Michael Ruppert's view that there are fake claims that are either
intentional disinformation or just stupidity, versus

David Ray Griffin's view that false claims essentially do not matter
to the greater cause of truth telling.

The fact that the mainstream media and "alternative" media
highlight the false claims and avoid the best evidence suggests that Ruppert's
analysis is the correct one.

.... Ruppert said he's trying to distance himself from the 9/11 movement.
The one subject he doesn’t tackle is physical evidence--the why
and how of the Towers’ collapse,
the strangeness surrounding the destruction at the Pentagon and the debris left behind by Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. This is the one area where the 9/11 movement is focusing
most of its energies now, he says, and physical evidence arguments are
"absolute minefields when you get into the legal arena," with
discussions devolving into a competition between whichever side can
provide the most experts.
The greater danger, according to Ruppert, is that the 9/11 movement
has been "heavily, heavily infiltrated … by government disinformation
operatives" who have put proverbial "poison
pills" into its debates.
Sounds paranoid, right? Not really. In the 1960s and 1970s, federal
programs like COINTELPRO used undercover
operatives to infiltrate the anti-war movement and discredit it, and
the practice apparently continues today. Last month, the American Civil
Liberties Union released data confirming that the government has been
spying on anti-war groups since the conflict in Iraq began in 2003.
[David Ray] Griffin, on the other hand, is skeptical of talk
about disinformation and infiltrators.
"I really haven’t had any strong suspicions about anybody,"
he said. "Even if there is some truth to it, I don’t
think it’s a very important concern."
Some of the more outlandish theories--like French writer Thierry
Meyssan’s claim that a cruise missile, not an airplane, hit
the Pentagon--are only diluting the waters, Ruppert said. There are
other theories, too: that there were no planes at all, only holographic
projections of planes (used in conjunction with explosives planted by
some shadowy group); or that one of the planes that hit the WTC had
some sort of anomalous "pod" attached
to it that caused extra damage. But this is all "bullshit,"
Ruppert said, and is either intentional disinformation or sheer stupidity.
The research conducted by the movement itself is getting lazy, as well,
according to Ruppert. Most of the Web sites reference previous research
done by Ruppert and others, or they simply reference themselves, which
hardly makes for a compelling case.
"My job is to keep my case pure, so if I've fallen out of the mainstream
with 9/11, so be it. But if 9/11 ever gets opened in a meaningful way,
my book is where (people) will have to come to," Ruppert said.

pp. 321 - 328

Chapter 9 "You and the Media: Ways Forward" is the strangest
part of Towers of Deception. This conclusion focuses on peace activists
in Eugene, Oregon who staged protests against a military recruiting center
as part of efforts to raise public awareness of the consequences of the
US invasion of Iraq. Towers profiles these demonstrations but did not
mention a much bigger story that is actually related to the thesis of
the book: how 9/11 truth information was covered up in the media, both
mainstream and alternative.

Eugene has been a node in the 9/11 truth network. Zwicker's films "The
Great Deception," "The Great Conspiracy" and "End
of Suburbia" have been shown countless times. Michael Ruppert has
spoken in Eugene twice since 9/11 (April 2002 and May 2005). David Ray
Griffin gave his second public presentation in Eugene to a crowd of nearly
500. Numerous smaller events on 9/11 truth issues have been organized.
Nearly 100,000 "Deception Dollars" were distributed in the Eugene
area from 2003 to 2005. However, all of this agitation and fermentation
never percolated into the local peace movement, which has done its best
to ignore the topic. It's a long story, some of which is summarized at www.oilempire.us/solomon.html How
the "leaders" of this local peace movement ignored 9/11 complicity
would have been much more relevant to the conclusion of "Towers."
(One of the people mentioned personally agrees about 9/11 and Peak Oil,
yet the group she works for refuses to touch the topic.)

p. 326

The profile of Carol Brouillet, publisher of the infamous "Deception
Dollars," could use some deeper reflection. The "Deception Dollars"
are one of the most brilliant outreach tools ever created (few groups
ever have made flyers that people in crowds rush to grab). Over six million
Deception Dollars were published, and despite their extreme popularity
no national "alternative" media dared to even mention the campaign.

Unfortunately, every edition of the Deception Dollars has included websites
that promoted lots of false claims. Some of these misdirections were merely
mistakes, but a few examples almost certainly were not. Perhaps the most
notorious was the early edition that included the white supremacist American
Free Press. A number of backlashes to the Deception Dollars and the
9/11 truth movement in general have been predicated on the presence of
far-right liars promoting obviously false claims.

In the spring of 2006, Brouillet helped with a showing of Loose Change in Oakland, California that featured the spokespersons for the film. This
prompted a front page story in USA Today focused on the 9/11 truth movement
-- which of course highlighted the "no plane" claims. Several
USA Today reporters saw Flight 77's crash into the Pentagon while driving
to work, which is why they mentioned this film and ignored the credible
evidence.

A truth teller focuses on the truth regardless of its popularity. A
politician is more focused on pleasing everyone, regardless of truth.

Brouillet is running for the House of Representatives on the 2006 ballot.
Her campaign website includes a letter from the incumbent Representative
dismissing all evidence of 9/11 complicity by debunking the "no plane"
hoax ...

p. 330

It is curious that "Share the Truth," a company that sells
a mix of very good and not-so-good books, movies and stickers is profiled
and From the Wilderness (which generated much of the original best evidence
documenting 9/11 complicity) is not.

Share the Truth has hosted (as have many other sites) the Pentagon
Strike hoax film, and sells a variety of information resources that
range from very high to very low quality, which merely confuses the audience
and provides an easy method for defenders of the official story to attack
the weak points.

pp. 344 - 346

This section downplays the significance of "Able Danger,"
a military intelligence program that was tracking some of the 9/11 hijackers
years before the attack. Military whistleblowers who have publicly stated
that Able Danger existed have suffered significant harassment -- but "Towers"
claims that this is merely a fall-back to cement the official story that
we were attacked. However, it is more likely that Able Danger was actually
part of the effort to track the participants (on the "Islamist"
side) and that the whistleblowers figured out part of the truth. Whoever
the patsies were, they would need (from the US covert apparatus perspective)
to be monitored, handled, however it was done. The fact that the would-be
hijackers were at the very least monitored long before 9/11 does not mean
there was not official complicity to let it happen (and provide technical
assistance).. The best compilation of information about Able Danger is
from the Center for Cooperative Research at www.cooperativeresearch.org

Walter sponsored an event in New York City on September 11, 2004 that
included some of the best
writers but also the creator of the In
Plane Site movie (which promoted "no plane"). A much better
event two days previous called 9/11 Citizens Commission was moderated
by Cynthia McKinney and included Barrie Zwicker, Mike Ruppert, John Judge,
Indira Singh, Jenna Orkin, Nicholas Levis, Kyle Hence and other experts.
Walter had hundreds of thousands of DVDs made of his event, while video
of the 9/9/2004 Citizens Commission event remains obscure, even among
the 9/11 truth movement activists. The jacket for the Walter event ("Confronting
the Evidence") shows an image of the second tower being hit that
includes an almost certainly photoshopped "flash" allegedly
from an explosion when the plane hit the tower (the claim is that this
alleged explosion was supposedly needed to open the structure of the towers
to allow penetration of the 100 tons of plane travelling over 500 miles
per hour). Other footage taken that day but publicized before this "flash"
claim was promoted did not show the alleged flash - a caution about relying
on "new images" released years after an event. The final part
of this chapter of the story was in 2005 when the "In Plane Site"
creators made a booklet titled "9/11 Citizens Commission" that
did not mention the September 9, 2004 event, ensuring it would be even
more difficult for anyone to track down the information from that effort.

In 2005, Mr. Walter organized a "megatour" of several European
countries that included Zwicker, but also Thierry Meyssan (the first popularizer
of Rumsfeld's "no plane" claim) and the main reporter for American
Free Press (the largest neo-Nazi newspaper in the United States).

Subsequently, Walter flew to Venezuela to try to persuade the government
there to believe in his theories of what happened on 9/11.

Walter's "reopen911" website has even promoted the claim that
nuclear explosives took down the World Trade Center, which is probably
the most bizarre nonsense to date masquerading as 9/11 truth.

p. 352

Again, the profile
of Global Outlook misses how it has not made efforts to separate the real
from fake claims. A lot of good material has been published in that magazine,
but a lot of falsehoods have also been reprinted. Global Outlook has not,
to this writers knowledge, published anything showing how the "no
plane" claims were just hoaxes inserted into the truth movement.

p. 355

"debris from Flight 93 was found
over 13 square kilometers ... the plane [went] straight down into that
'crash site' too small for such a plane, where no bodies and not a drop
of blood were found."

This concluding section of the book is inconsistent - either Towers is
arguing for the shootdown of Flight 93 or
for some fanciful story of plane swapping. The fact that debris was found
over 13 square miles strongly suggests the plane broke apart in mid-air,
presumably from an air to air missile fired by an Air Force fighter plane.
The claims that body parts were not found are not true, easily debunked
and originally sourced to the hoax publication American
Free Press. Full speed crashes into the Earth shred large planes into
small pieces, and the unfortunate victims are equally shredded into bits
(one hopes their trauma ended quickly).

The reality that the plane was probably shot down is evidence that the
government is lying, not necessarily that they allowed it or engineered
it. The public could probably cope with the "Sophie's choice"
to shoot down the plane to prevent a worse catastrophe (a crash into the
US Capitol, perhaps), but that understanding would then force a further
question - why Flight 77 was not similarly prevented from reaching its
target when it was over the West Virginia / Ohio border at 9:03 am, when
the second (South) tower was hit and the entire military / intelligence
system had no doubt about what was underway (a terror attack, not an "accidental"
crash in New York).